Since the org staff wants to wait to gather ideas in an organized manner, I've decided to take it upon myself to create what I think are the necessary threads to get the job done. I don't want to wait until the coding is done before we know what the website will look like and function. Lets start now.

This thread is for ideas about new features and functions the org should provide or support. Examples would be, improving the journal system, allow direct comments to videos everyone can view and reply to, streaming options. If you have an idea, let us know!

Go.

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I could go back to previous incarnations of the org with no problems. It would be easier to tell you what features I dislike or am indifferent to, since the features I use I might believe are inherent.

As long as I can super search, download, and leave opinions, that is all I need. I hate or am indifferent to pretty much everything else (QCs, star ratings, journals, preview, etc, etc). All that stuff is window dressing. Definitely not necessities.

Uploading, searching with ease, downloading [in a fairly simple manner], leaving opinions, journals and banner voting. That's really all I want to see on the main page. Guides can be banished to a really large FAQ page for all I care.

Oh, and new videos in the middle of the page, each with small preview function.

I believe the core focus should be for editors to easily show their videos and viewers to easily watch them. So, basically, any feature that isn't directly related to that can go on a back burner as far as I'm concerned.

Nya-chan Production wrote:I would like to point out one important thing - the new org will actually have LESS features when it appears, since it has to be redesigned FROM SCRATCH.

So the actual question for now is more of - What are the basic features that you think you can't go without? Why?

Instead of adding and/or removing features and not telling the community what we are doing, how about we ask them what they want to be added or removed? This website's redesign shouldn't only be discussed by 4 or 5 programmers in a private sub forum.

For example:

Does the community think a slider based scoring system should replace the star scale?

Should we have Studio pages that can be updated and managed by the studio creators?

Does the org need a poll on the front page?

Do amvs need thumbnails on the video page?

These are questions that should be asked so people can design the website knowing what the community wants. If we spend a lot of time working on stuff no one wants, its just going to be more wasted time and energy.

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Nya-chan Production wrote:We are now working on the core, not features, so it's pointless to ask about those now.

I disagree. If you know the overall vision of what you are eventually going for you can make important yet seemingly simple design decisions early in the core development to accommodate the development of additional features down the road. If you don't plan ahead you may be pulling your hair out and refactoring a lot of code later on.

Anyway, this seems like a good place to mention the recommender system I wrote for the .org. We may want to put it into greater prominence than the current suggestion query system, since the current consensus seems to be that it works better. It's written in a way that makes it rely very little on the current setup of the .org database or the php code. My wild guess is that the recommender will work better if people are still required, or at least strongly encouraged, to give ratings.

Also, it wouldn't be terribly hard (for me) to modify the same system to find the nearest neighbors to a given video. That way we could have a 'related videos' column on most video pages.

I should also point out that, at least in theory, both of these systems should work better than youtube's 'related videos' system, because the system doesn't have to deal with the huge diversity of videos that youtube has to deal with. If done right, this could give the .org a real advantage over youtube.

Nya-chan Production wrote:We are now working on the core, not features, so it's pointless to ask about those now.

I disagree. If you know the overall vision of what you are eventually going for you can make important yet seemingly simple design decisions early in the core development to accommodate the development of additional features down the road. If you don't plan ahead you may be pulling your hair out and refactoring a lot of code later on.

We of course have that in mind - wouldn't be possible to work it out otherwise. But as you stated, it's more of a "general" feel - details like polls, sliders vs star ratings and such are implementation things which can be changed very simply.

leptogenesis wrote:Who all is actually involved in the coding process?

Anyway, this seems like a good place to mention the recommender system I wrote for the .org. We may want to put it into greater prominence than the current suggestion query system, since the current consensus seems to be that it works better. It's written in a way that makes it rely very little on the current setup of the .org database or the php code. My wild guess is that the recommender will work better if people are still required, or at least strongly encouraged, to give ratings.

Also, it wouldn't be terribly hard (for me) to modify the same system to find the nearest neighbors to a given video. That way we could have a 'related videos' column on most video pages.

I should also point out that, at least in theory, both of these systems should work better than youtube's 'related videos' system, because the system doesn't have to deal with the huge diversity of videos that youtube has to deal with. If done right, this could give the .org a real advantage over youtube.

I checked and I can see you have an access to programmers section of the forums - check with me and Kariudo over PM or IM and we'll probably get you more informed about what we need and what's the vision in coding sense - even though these information aren't really public, every hand can be useful.

Corran wrote:Regarding rating systems, I like this one that Doki noted last year.

I know, I was posting it for the others since they had been mentioning a desire for the rating system to change and this was brought up in a hidden forum where they could not have known of or discuss it. I think it would benefit the org more if there is an open discussion on these kinds of topics even if the org is already considering them. This has always been a site dedicated to a community and so I think it is important that the community have an say on what they think the org should be. I don't think anyone's ideas should be shot down by site staff or other user's regarding the practicality of implementation unless the idea is patently flawed from the start. If users post a ton of ideas that can't be implemented at this early a stage, then these threads can simply be bookmarked for later. User's should likewise understand that not every idea can or will be implemented.

With that said, I think everyone should toss in their two cents regardless of whether you just joined yesterday, are a site veteran, a programmer, or help run the site. Perhaps someone with a unique point of view will come up with input or an idea no one ever thought of.